Common American surnames include Anderson, Miller and Smith.
No matter how common they may feel for you, the frequency does not exceed to the point of, let’s say, five or nine students in a 30 person classroom.
With a billion Chinese nationals and not counting the millions of overseas Chinese population, Chinese surnames have a surprisingly small pool, according to CNN’s Why 1.2 billion people in China share the same 100 surnames.
Image downloaded from http://www.chinapeace.gov.cn/
Five most common Chinese last names represented in size via proportion to the population.
Do you know someone with one of the surnames above?
If 6,000 surnames distributed for over a billion people seems abstract, how about if I told you, the top 10 names make up 30% of the population.
To use a comparison, the top ten surnames in Japan, make up 10% of Japanese population.
This means that social media tools like LinkedIn and Facebook are not that useful for people with Chinese names to find each other.
For example, my Chinese last name is one of the top five most common last names in the Chinese world. During this pandemic, my high school friends have reconnected with me, after decades of unsuccessful attempts because there are so many Yvonne Liu’s. The reason they found me was that one of my college dorm mates found me under Yvonne Wolf, via LinkedIn through nee Liu.
You may think Yvonne Wolf is common too, but my married name was actually useful in filtering down to Yvonne Liu Wolf.
For this reason, I have stopped looking for my high school friends with names like Amy Liu, Debbie Hu, and Mary Hsu. Each of these names generate a list up to 20-40 just within one metropolitan area such as Vancouver, Los Angeles or New York City.
With such small last name pools, asking someone like me, if I know another person by the same last name Liu is quite unlikely in a Chinese conversation.
To read more about Chinese last names:
Why surnames seem more important in Chinese culture
Why is a name, not just a name?
What are the Chinese equivalents of Anderson, Miller and Smith?
